Armed police were called out when a drunken man chased a police officer with a 12-inch carving knife, a court was told.

Mark McManus, 25, ran amok after drinking at home with his wife and neighbours, said prosecutor Aisha Wadoodi.

His wife phoned police when he began wrecking the house and then he grabbed the knife and said that he was going to kill a man who lived up the street, Teesside Crown Court was told yesterday.

A police officer was walking towards the house when McManus jumped from a window shouting "I'm going to kill you" and making stabbing motions towards him.

The officer radioed for help saying: "He's trying to stab me, he's chasing me around the bloody car with a knife."

The officer sprayed McManus with a pepper spray and he jumped on the police car causing some damage. He ran off to his father-in-law's home nearby where he was followed by armed officers.

Miss Wadoodi added: "He eventually walked out with his hands up in the air.

"Asked how he would have felt if he had been chased with a knife he said: 'Petrified'."

He had previous convictions for assault on police and other violence, and he had served four and a half years for arson.

The Recorder of Middlesbrough Judge Peter Fox QC told him: "These courts will give all the protection that they can to police officers in such circumstances."

McManus, of Smyth Place, Hartlepool, was jailed for 18 months after he pleaded guilty to possession of an offensive weapon on September 6 last year, making a threat to kill, and two offences of criminal damage.